1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a print control apparatus, method and program which cause printing by using a continuous sheet.
2. Description of the Related Art
In order to print images on both surfaces of a continuous sheet such as roll paper, there has been provided a technology in the past (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 11-249346) which prints on one surface of a continuous sheet installed in a printing unit, then cuts the continuous sheet, temporarily reels it, and re-installs the continuous sheet to the printing unit. For efficient printing, such a printing apparatus performs printing on one surface for a plurality of pages continuously and performs printing on the other surface after the printing on the one surface for all pages. This procedure may realize efficient double-side printing. For example, a procedure as illustrated in FIG. 8A may be performed in order to perform double-side printing including printing four copies of five pages of images on a first surface and a second surface of a sheet. In other words, pages on the first surface of each copy are printed first. After the final page of the fourth copy is printed, a sheet is cut (801) and is reversed. Then, the second surface is printed from the fourth copy, and the first copy is printed last. Thus, the double-side printing for four copies is completed where a unit 802 is handled as one copy.
When an interrupt printing is performed in middle of a printing procedure as illustrated in FIG. 8A, there may occur problems as follows.
For example, as illustrated in FIG. 8B, a case may be assumed in which an interrupt job 2 (803) having two pages occurs in middle of printing on the first surface of the second copy. In this case, the sheet is cut in middle of the first surface of the second copy (after printing the third page in FIG. 8B, and the interrupt job 2 (803) is executed. Because the second surface of the first copy and second copy are not printed by the job 1 that has been executed before the interrupt printing, it results in an incomplete printed material (804). Therefore, printing (805) from the first copy is required again. This wastes the printing material before the interrupt occurs and lowers the printing efficiency because of performing the same printing process again.